June 22, 2022
Steve and I decided last night we were changing plans for our sightseeing today. We were going to go back downtown to Nashville and get on the hop-on hop-off trolley, but tickets were $53 bucks a piece and any other museum we would see would cost another $50 or $60. Instead, we drove out to Lynchburg, TN (about a 2 hour drive), and toured the Jack Daniels distillery.
Neither Steve or I are whiskey drinkers, but Jack Daniels is only made in TN and we thought it would be fun to learn about it. As we took the tour, Steve asked our guide many questions. He understands the process because of his food manufacturing background and was interested in every aspect of it. Towards the end of the tour we were able to watch the people bottling, labeling and packing the whiskey. The assembly line brought back many memories of his working days and he recognized some of the equipment he used to use. As he watched the people work he began to critique the workers and tell me how he’d reduce labor costs with less people! I told him maybe they’d like to hire him, but he said no, he’s happy to be retired. So am I and I don’t think I’d want to move to TN!
While that was a highlight for him, I enjoyed the history of the actual person, Jack Daniels. An interesting fact is that many of the descendants that worked at the original distillery still work there. Our guide was a 3rd generation of workers.
The tour ended with 6 whiskey samples of different flavors. We we’re surprised that we actually liked some of the flavored ones. It was a great tour and we were happy that we chose it to do today.
Lynchburg was a very small quaint town where we stopped for lunch. Every shop in the town is a tourist shop or restaurant and I loved it. I shopped in some of them and would have shopped more, but it was a 2 hour drive back to the motel and it was 3:00 already.
The back roads were scenic, but hot! We saw the temperature on a sign that read 102! I was dying in the car. The heat comes up by my feet and they felt like they were on fire! Ugh! We were lucky that driving to Nashville the temps were moderate, now I hate to think of driving in this going home.
When we neared Nashville, we came upon 3 separate accidents. We were stuck in heavy traffic because of it and the car started to get hot. We began to have vapor lock issues and were worried that we would stall in the middle of the road. Steve, in his wisdom, adjusted the carburetor and the “A” ran better. A few miles before we reached the motel we missed our turn, but we were able to take the next road which got us back on the road we’d missed. We feel God again was watching over us. If we’d taken the correct turn we would have been stuck in more traffic because of another accident. As it was we went around the stopped traffic and avoided being stuck. We made it the rest of the way back to the motel without any problems
Tomorrow we say good-bye to Nashville. It’s been fun and we’ve seen and learned a lot, but we’re ready to leave. Hopefully, the weather will continue to be sunny, but maybe not so hot, and definitely, no rain.
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